A Vision For The Future
There has been considerable response to my earlier post on the attacks on Kerry, both here and on Democratic Underground. One point I find important is why it is important for the Democrats to make their positions clear. Republicans have a narrative people understand. It may be lies, but still people think they know what they are voting for. For example, they think they are voting for small government and the free market. (The fact that they are really getting bigger government and crony capitalism instead is a different matter). Don't even get me started right now on voting for "moral values."
They aren't so sure with the Democrats. Conservatives in the media claim the Democrats don't have anything to say other than to say no to what the Republicans want, and a lot of people are buying this.
Kerry is working towards forming a true European style opposition. That would likely include proposing alternative to the Republican plans. It would give people a clearer picture of why they should vote for the Democrats.
It is necessary to start now, and not wait until the next election cycle. One reason the Republicans are so successful is that they have been pushing their views for years. It is too late to do this in an election campaign. By then, the media concentrates on the horse race and ideas are condensed to a sound bite.
The Republicans were prepared for that. When Bush gave his sound bites, people who have heard the conservative message for years knew what he was talking about and were programmed to go along. When they heard Kerry sound bites, they had not heard his ideas before and that was not enough. That was one of the reasons why Kerry's message was perceived to be unclear and weaker than Bush's.
Kerry learned from his defeat and appears to be moving in the right direction towards building an effective opposition. We might not agree with every position and every strategy, but the point is that he is working on a strategy. We can agree to disagree on some issues, such as whether Democrats need to propose their own Social Security plan, without needing blog posts attacking the others. While Jerome is not clear on why he is criticizing Kerry now, I object to the idea of his knee jerk protests which seem to be simply because something is coming from John Kerry.
They aren't so sure with the Democrats. Conservatives in the media claim the Democrats don't have anything to say other than to say no to what the Republicans want, and a lot of people are buying this.
Kerry is working towards forming a true European style opposition. That would likely include proposing alternative to the Republican plans. It would give people a clearer picture of why they should vote for the Democrats.
It is necessary to start now, and not wait until the next election cycle. One reason the Republicans are so successful is that they have been pushing their views for years. It is too late to do this in an election campaign. By then, the media concentrates on the horse race and ideas are condensed to a sound bite.
The Republicans were prepared for that. When Bush gave his sound bites, people who have heard the conservative message for years knew what he was talking about and were programmed to go along. When they heard Kerry sound bites, they had not heard his ideas before and that was not enough. That was one of the reasons why Kerry's message was perceived to be unclear and weaker than Bush's.
Kerry learned from his defeat and appears to be moving in the right direction towards building an effective opposition. We might not agree with every position and every strategy, but the point is that he is working on a strategy. We can agree to disagree on some issues, such as whether Democrats need to propose their own Social Security plan, without needing blog posts attacking the others. While Jerome is not clear on why he is criticizing Kerry now, I object to the idea of his knee jerk protests which seem to be simply because something is coming from John Kerry.
posted by Ron Chusid at 3:14 PM
1 Comments:
It's funny because I read about this incident days ago and I never got out of it that JK was saying we needed a compromise SS plan. I honestly thought (and so did others) that he meant a plan was needed to stop ShrubCo from taking the middle ground on this issue and calling it a victory. I've heard Tweety say this was a possibility for weeks on his show, so the seeds have already been planted on this idea that Shrub wins no matter what on SS. MyDD, Kos and DU are more Dean fanatic sites than anything. And many of their posters have never really forgiven JK for besting Dean in the primaries. So any misinformation placed out there making JK look like the bad guy and they are all over it. Whereas any news about any good stuff JK is doing is virtually ignored. Just another case of Dems eating their own.
Florida Dem
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